Rare Book Monthly

The West and More Americana from Arthur H. Clark

Catalogue 924 from the Arthur H. Clark Company.

By Michael Stillman

We just received the latest offering from The Arthur H. Clark Company of Spokane, Washington. Clark specializes in Americana and the West, and catalogue 924 presents 340 more such items for your consideration. It is a mix of older material, that is, 19th century printings when the West was young, with more recent histories of that era and reprints of hard to find old works. Researchers and collectors alike will be impressed. Some of these titles are obscure and will fill holes in collections you might not even know exist. Here are a few samples.

The Nez Perce War was one of the later attempts by an American Indian nation to hold onto its land. During the days of westward expansion, Nez Perce Chief Joseph was one who believed the native tribes and white men could coexist on the land. However, as the settlers and the Army pushed them farther and farther back, he finally concluded that resistance was the only way. In 1877, they made their stand. The Nez Perce fought gallantly to save their land, but were no match for the powerful American Army. Pushed back nearly 2,000 miles by the pursuing army, they were forced to surrender. Item 109 is sort of the final chapter to this sad story. It is Yellow Wolf: His Own Story, by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, published in 1940. McWhorter was a rancher who developed a deep interest in and friendship with the Indians of Washington State. In particular, he chronicled the history of the Nez Perce and Yakama tribes, being adopted as a member of the latter. A chance meeting with Yellow Wolf of the Nez Perce led to this book. Yellow Wolf was one of the last Indian survivors of the Nez Perce War, and it provides a perspective different from those of soldiers who fought on the other side. Priced at $75.

For a look at Oregon at the dawn of the influx of immigrants from the east, there is The Oregon Territory: a geographical and physical account of that country and its inhabitants with outlines of its history and discovery, by Rev. C.G. Nicolay. This book was published in London in 1846, the year in which the British ceded their claims to the territory to the U.S., and just as the large migration was about to begin. It describes early settlement of Oregon and the fur trade which brought the first Europeans and Americans to the territory. Item 294. $235.

Here is a look at early California, and this time we mean very early California. The book is Rancho La Brea: A Record of Pleistocene Life in California, by Chester Stock. The Plesitocene Epoch began around 1.8 million years ago, and ended about 11,000 years past, or roughly 10,850 years before the California Gold Rush. Its end probably coincides with the earliest human settlement in the Americas. The La Brea Tar Pits yielded an amazing collection of animals that roamed North America in the late Pleistocene, roughly 8,000-40,000 years ago. Among the species found that are now extinct, or found only in zoos on this continent, are mammoths, mastodons, native horses, camels, longhorn bison, and perhaps the most famous of these extinct animals, the saber-toothed tiger. The cause of their disappearance is uncertain, but the appearance of humans at this time is not likely a total coincidence. Item 1962. Published in 1930. $18.50.

Rare Book Monthly

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> Charles Darwin on sexuality and the transmission of hereditary characteristics: Autograph Letter Signed to Lawson Tait. Down, 17 January [1877].

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> MILTON, JOHN. <i>Paradise Lost. A Poem written in ten books.</i> London: 1667. A very rare example with the contemporary binding untouched and with a 1667 title page.

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> Hamilton secures the ratification of the Constitution: <i>The Debates and Proceedings of the Convention of the State of New-York, assembled at Poughkeespsie, on the 17th June, 1788.</i>

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> The social contract “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”: ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUES. <i>Principes du Droit Politique [Du Contract Social]</i>. Amsterdam: Michel Rey, 1762

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> “The first English textbook on geometrical land-measurement and surveying”: BENESE, RICHARD. <i>This Boke Sheweth the Maner of Measurynge All Maner of Lande…</i>